Motherboard Watch: Asus A7V266

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

On Tuesday, Asus released its new Socket A board for the Athlon platform, the A7V266, incorporating the Via KT266 chipset.

The board combines the KT266 north bridge with Via’s VT8366 south bridge, allowing both Athlon and Duron processors to run at speeds of 1.4 GHz and above. The chipset also supports the 266-MHz front-side bus.

The board’s features include three double-data-rate (DDR) DIMM slots for up to 3 Gbytes of PC2100 DDR DRAM. Five PCI slots have been included, as well as an Audio Modem Riser (AMR) slot, an AGP Pro slot, six USB 1.1 connections, two serial ports, and a parallel port.

Additional features of note include the option of onboard audio, which adds a C-Media CMI8738 6-channel audio processor. Support for a smart card reader has also been added. CPU speeds are adjustable on a megahertz-by-megahertz basis, while the voltage can be modified in 0.05-volt increments.

The Asus A7V266 is shipping now, although a spokeswoman said in an eamil that shipments to the U.S. will begin in about two weeks’ time.